BDB Chapter 66

Hearing the clear sound from the earphones, Jiang Pei let out a sigh of relief and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

He couldn’t even begin to describe the anger he felt when he saw that news online.

He knew it was wrong for him to harbor such malicious thoughts about his little sister, whom he had cherished for over twenty years. So, when she chose to avoid them, and he wanted to intervene but was brushed off with her grown-up excuse, he decided to retreat.

It was also on that day that he realized just how intense the man’s desire for her was.

Though people of their status typically couldn’t tolerate repeated rejection, that man stubbornly followed her.

When she walked fast, the man matched her pace.

When she slowed down, the man did the same.

He was stepping into her shadow, his eyes no longer cold when he saw him, but filled with affection.

He could see that the man genuinely liked her, but Jiang Pei wasn’t optimistic about him.

The man was fierce and violent. During their first meeting, even though there was no personal conflict, he had wanted to break his legs. Now, with scandals about him being secretly married to a popular female actor and cheating with a mistress, it was clear he was no good.

He knew his little sister would never be a mistress, but the man’s complicated personal connections and social status made him fear that she might eventually be hurt. That was why he had come back.

He was a computer science major, and he had a bit of talent in the field. In his spare time, he did outsourcing work for some companies and dabbled in hacker forums. Using his hacking skills, he had breached the security system of the ancient castle and saw her image on the surveillance.

He found that since the news broke online, she had been living alone in the ancient castle.

The man didn’t seem to be mistreating her. Her room was decorated in a fresh yet simple manner, with various styles of clothes and jewelry, and the ingredients for daily cooking were fresh materials placed in the refrigerator each morning.

Her food, clothing, and living arrangements were all meticulously arranged, but… what did that matter?

The man had restricted all her means of accessing external information!

Jiang Pei didn’t know whether she was doing this voluntarily or under duress, whether she was infatuated with love or deceived by the man. But he knew that such arrangements indicated the man had something to hide.

He couldn’t help but feel relieved that, during their last meeting, he had secretly swapped the earphones in her backpack while she wasn’t looking. He had added a positioning and communication chip to them, originally to contact her if something urgent happened at home and she avoided them again. He hadn’t expected it to be useful at this time.

The earphones needed to be placed in her ears to function.

He had stayed up day and night watching her on the monitor. Finally, on the afternoon of the second day after the news broke, he saw her plug the earphones into the MP3 player the man had given her to pass the time.

That was when he learned she had lost her memory. And the man was deceiving her, claiming she was his fiancée and that they were genuinely in love.

It was absurd!

He would not let that man succeed.

When Jiang Pei thought of this, his speech became faster as he described the location. However, as he was speaking, a sudden loud bang erupted from the front windshield being struck by a heavy object.

He was momentarily stunned, but being someone who excelled in his studies, his reaction time was generally quick.

So, while starting the car engine, he quickly told the headset, “Raorao, I’ve been discovered. The Li family’s estate is built facing west, so you should run east. Remember how to determine directions from middle school geography? Tree rings are wider on the south side and narrower on the north. On a clear day, you can judge east and west by the sunrise and sunset. Also…”

Before he could finish, he heard her voice on the other end, “Big brother, he… has already found me.”

Jiang Pei was taken aback, then heard another loud bang as a bodyguard on a motorcycle slammed into his car window.

The car window glass was much more fragile than the windshield, and with glass shards flying into the car, the decision had to be made quickly.

Seeing that there were more than a few motorcycles outside, he gritted his teeth and said, “Big brother will definitely come back to find you.”

He then pressed the accelerator to flee from halfway up the mountain location.

At this time, the night was quiet.

The ancient castle halfway up the mountain was already far from the noise, so even though Jiang Rao spoke softly, her voice clearly reached Li Jueyan’s ears.

She was wearing a pair of small white earphones, and her voice was trembling as she spoke into them.

He felt a pang of pain.

She wanted to escape from him, and she was afraid of him.

Even though she had disliked him and wanted to distance herself from him before, she had never been afraid of him.

Was he really this wrong?

His heart felt like it was overflowing with blood, his eyelashes trembling. “Raorao, come home with me.”

Despite anticipating this outcome, he was still taken aback when she firmly rejected him, “Li Jueyan, that’s not my home. You’ve been deceiving me from the beginning. I’m not your fiancée, and we never received anyone’s blessing. You even had a wife before, and I was just a substitute for her when she was out of the country! She’s back now, so why won’t you just let me go?”

Li Jueyan took a deep breath. “Is that what Jiang Pei told you? That you’re Jiang Tang’s substitute? Fucking bullshit! Raorao, everything is not…”

It was the first time she had heard him curse. Although her memories had told her that the man she saw was not the real him, she hadn’t expected that their recent interactions had all been lies.

She knew she couldn’t outfight the man, but she had her own weapon.

She knew he cared about her. Although she didn’t know the depth of his feelings or how they originated, she was certain he would be heartbroken.

Clenching her hands at her sides, she interrupted him and tears instantly streamed down her face. “I don’t want to hear these explanations.” “Li Jueyan, I just want to know how I lost my memory.”

She had checked her body and found no injuries.

She had been eating a variety of foods these days, so if she had indeed undergone a gastric lavage recently, her digestive system wouldn’t be functioning so well.

So, when the man told her last night that she had lost her memory because of an overdose of sleeping pills and a subsequent gastric lavage, she immediately realized he was lying to her.

As expected, upon hearing the question, the man was instantly flustered.

His dark eyes were half-focusing, and after a long moment of hesitation, he couldn’t produce a single reason or explanation.

Jiang Rao hadn’t wanted to play the villain, but she knew that if she showed even a hint of softness now, she would never be able to leave.

If everything were truly as he had claimed, she might have genuinely considered spending her life with him.

But unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

Just thinking about why she had lost her memory, why she was trapped in that luxurious yet cold ancient castle under the pretense of recovering, but in reality, being forbidden from interacting with outsiders—all these were linked to his selfishness and deceit. She couldn’t just accept that and continue on.

Her cheeks were now wet with tears, and with the night wind blowing against her, she said coldly, “I want to leave.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Why not?”

Why not?

Because I love you.

Now that I know what it feels like to have you, if you leave, I will die.

“I want to leave.” Seeing that he still remained silent, she persisted.

Li Jueyan finally looked up and said, “Raorao, I will die.”

He really would die.

“I remember everything now. If you truly love me, given all the wrongs you’ve done to me, you should atone for your sins, not keep making mistakes. Li Jueyan, don’t make me think so poorly of you, alright? If you continue like this, do you really think you can have me?” She turned her head away, pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth, and after a moment, she said again, “If you trap me, I will die as well.” Her tone was resolute, and Li Jueyan’s heart inexplicably trembled.

At this moment, he was actually at the end of his strength. It wasn’t that he had noticed her abnormal behavior beforehand, nor had his resistance to alcohol rapidly declined in this short period. Instead, the moment she stepped out of the ancient castle, he had shattered a bottle of wine on the table and cut his own wrist.

The pain kept him awake, but the cut was on a blood vessel, which also accelerated his loss of life.

He suddenly thought about their past lives’ ending.

When she had cut her wrist and placed her arm in a bath to accelerate blood flow, had she also felt as he did now—cold and filled with despair?

He thought she might have been right.

What he should have done was atone, not use force to keep her by his side.

But why did it have to be so painful?

It felt as if his heart had been struck heavily, and the thick smell of blood rose through his throat into his mouth. Yet, he suppressed the metallic taste and forced a smile, “Alright, I will let you go.” Even as you walked away, each step felt like a sharp blade piercing my heart.

Jiang Rao didn’t expect things to go so smoothly.

But the memories she had gathered told her that this man was unpredictable, and changing his mind and deceiving others was something he could do with ease.

So, while he hadn’t changed his mind yet, she needed to leave without looking back.

She turned decisively and walked away without hesitation. Throughout the whole process, she didn’t even slow her pace, let alone look back at him.

Finally, when her figure disappeared into the night, he collapsed on the ground.

His consciousness was now somewhat blurred. He recalled a saying he had once heard, though he had forgotten who said it, but it remained vividly in his memory: One shouldn’t meet someone too dazzling in youth, or one’s entire life would be restless, as they would be unforgettable.

He thought.

She might be so dazzling that he remembered her for two lifetimes.

But she still had to leave.

She was leaving.

What would become of his obsession?

It would be better to die.

——